NICOLA BRYANT
A PERI PECULIAR PRACTICE
IN 1984, NICOLA BRYANT BOARDED THE TARDIS TO PLAY DOCTOR WHO’S ORIGINAL ALL-AMERICAN GIRL, PERPUGILLIAM BROWN
WORDS: ROBBIE DUNLOP
TRINITY MIRROR / MIRRORPIX / ALAMY
IT’S UNUSUAL FOR AN ACTOR TO JUMP FROM drama school straight into a high-profile television series, but Nicola Bryant did just that when she joined Doctor Who as Perpugilliam – Peri to her friends! – Brown. “Everyone was expected to get a job in rep and then build up their CV,” she tells SFX. “You might get a little role in telly. You just didn’t think that you’d get a lead role in something.”
Was she thrown into the deep end? “Definitely. Drama school was predominantly stage work, and we’d done a tiny bit of radio. The year before I’d volunteered, in my summer holidays, to hold the boom for the year above me who were doing one week’s worth of television. We never had that.”
We might venture that Bryant had jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the fire – aPlanet Of Fire if you will – but she took it all in her stride. “I was so excited the whole time to be working on Doctor Who that nothing bothered me. You’re young and you’re constantly in that learning phase. You roll with it.”
NOT DROWNING BUT WAVING
And so, she did. One of the very first scenes that Bryant filmed – Peri struggling in the clear waters of Lanzarote – was disrupted by an unexpected arrival. “I was way out at sea – further than I was comfortable,” she explains. “Our director Fiona [Cumming] was over on shore with a megaphone. She would shout ‘Drown!’ and I would drown for as long as I could.”
But the crew was unaware that sunbathers lurked on a next-door beach. “I was busy drowning and this poor man heard me shouting ‘help’. He ran over volcanic rock and swam out. I do feel sorry for him really. He stopped right in front of me, and I looked at him and he looked at me, and he said something in German. Then I realised: ‘Oh my goodness, he’s come to save me!’ I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry, we’re filming!’ He saw the cameras, gave them a little gesture, and then swam off.”